


The Weight of the World

by LizzieHarker



Series: The Arrowsverse [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Has Nightmares, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Recovering, M/M, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve Rogers has a guilt complex, a little fluff at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 09:19:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11825724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizzieHarker/pseuds/LizzieHarker
Summary: Therapy is hard. Bucky expect that, but the nightmares and the wreckage that Hydra left in his body are sometimes too much to handle alone.





	The Weight of the World

Bucky felt the electric current spark beneath his skin a split-second before the fire ripped through him. He prayed this time it would finish the job, burn him away to nothing but ash, scorch him to oblivion. But as usual, the pain didn’t end—it grew worse. His left arm sat a mangled mess of flesh and metal, exposed wires and nerves equally raw, the muscle rendered pulpy from all the hacking and pulling. There was no gentleness, no mercy in the frostbitten hell that swallowed him after his fall from the train. 

They’d kept him conscious during the procedure. The doctors wanted him awake. Said it ensured the arm would function properly, like Bucky had been born with the metal monstrosity, but he knew, even half dead from agony, they kept him awake for sport. He’d already screamed himself hoarse, his vocal chords as blown-out as that village he’d once stumbled across, broken bodies and buildings shredded in the aftermath of explosions and gunfire.  
Something was wrong. The steady mechanical beat he knew to be his pulse became erratic. Harried, angry German filled his head. The sparks kept flaring, but he was too far gone. They’d already burned through his skin, his muscle, his bone. What more was left? 

His body revolted.

Blood spilled hot into his lungs, racing up his throat, clotting and choking and smothering. It bubbled past his lips, ran down his chin. 

_Yes, please, yes, end it, end it, end it._

He couldn’t breathe. Everything hurt, so nothing did. The dark pressed in, the one good thing Bucky could yet have, but in the dark he found a pair of blue eyes staring back. Eyes that belonged to a face he should remember. A face he’d known. A face he missed.

“Bucky?” 

He knew that voice, too. Knew the worry and fear it held. A itch scrabbled at the back of his brain.

But Bucky couldn’t hold the night back long enough to set the pieces in place.

*

He gasped so hard his bones hurt, bolting upright in the middle of the bed. He’d flung the sheets away, but in his night-black bedroom, wasn’t certain if they might yet shift back into shackles and hold him down. The bed creaked, and a hand came to rest against his back. 

Bucky’s metal fingers locked around the other man’s throat without a second thought. The doctors weren’t going to restrain him, weren’t going to put him under again. Not now. Not ever.

“Buck, it’s me,” Steve choked, reaching out to touch Bucky’s right arm. 

Bucky recoiled, releasing him immediately, metal fingers twitching in the air. He wanted to place them against Steve’s cheek but couldn’t bear to touch him. “I’m sorry, Stevie,” he whispered. “I didn’t know.”

“S’okay,” Steve answered, rubbing Bucky’s shoulder. His other hand gingerly touched his throat. Bucky could make out the faint signs of bruising. He hated himself a little bit more.

Steve’s hands were always so warm. Or maybe Bucky was still half on ice. Had he ever really come out of it? “Sorry I woke you.”

Steve kept light pressure against Bucky’s skin. Grounding. The therapist had taught him that. “Nightmare?”

“Yeah.”

“C’mere,” Steve said, sliding his arm around Bucky’s shoulders and drawing him back down, cradling Bucky’s head against his chest. 

Bucky settled in, trying to matching his breathing to the soft rhythm of Steve’s heartbeat. Once, it was Steve who’d had trouble breathing, who’d wake in the night in a panic or in pain. Bucky’s lungs still hurt, but the phantom agony was fading. He wished he could rip every terror away, burn the memories out of his brain, sleep through the night without screaming.

“Wanna talk about it?” Steve asked, calm and quiet. Bucky shook his head. What was there to say? “Was it the train? Ghosts?” Steve traced patterns along Bucky’s arm, fingers drifting over scar tissue. Bucky tensed. “The operating table,” he said, flatting his palm.

“I have so many fucking nightmares, you’ve catalogued them, huh?” Bucky said, managing a weak huff despite his numbness and exhaustion. The horrors in his head were endless, a bottomless pit of poison and anguish. They coursed through him, in tandem with the serum in his veins that magnified his hatred, his jealousy, and all the things he wanted kept in the dark. Kept away from Steve. Closing his eyes, he let the wave of nausea pass. 

Steve cupped the side of Bucky’s face. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to endure this alone,” he said.

“But I do.” 

Instantly, he knew he shouldn’t have said it, but damn if that wasn’t how he felt every time. Steve suffered secondhand; late nights, lack of sleep, talking Bucky off the ledge. He didn’t feel the knives, the bullets, the shocks, he didn’t relive the bite and burn kicked up in long-healed scars, but it was enough and it was his fault. 

Steve paused. “Feel like you have to, or that you’re alone?”

Bucky swallowed. He’d held the venom in so long, letting it eke out felt vile, like he was ruining the one decent thing he’d managed to reclaim. But once he started, he couldn’t stop. Not looking at Steve made it easier. “I’m tired of being broken. I scramble to put all the pieces back together but they don’t fit anymore. For every good memory I regain of myself, of the past, there are two more from the Soldier covered in blood and gore. It all bleeds through and no matter how hard I try to keep swimming, the water’s just getting higher. I’m supposed to remember, it’s supposed to help me, but God, I don’t want to. I’m doing everything right, and I’m still drowning, Stevie.”

Steve reached down for the blankets and wrapped Bucky up tight. “You’re not drowning, sweetheart. I’ve got you. But I understand. When I came out of the ice, I thought everyone I knew and loved was gone. All I had were memories and ghosts.”

Bucky buried his face in Steve’s neck. “It’s not the same.”

“No, but I had a death wish a century long and a nation wide. When I found Peggy was still alive, I was just lucky to have her, but once she was gone . . .” Steve trailed off. “She’d lived her entire life, and I haven’t gotten to. You hadn’t gotten to. It was like I blinked and I found myself in the future. Seventy years in a moment. I was angry, I was jealous. I didn’t care what happened to me. I followed Fury because I needed something to do, otherwise I’d lose it. And then you hit me like a fucking battering ram.

“I . . . It sounds wrong, but you showed up and my first thought was that you were a miracle,” Steve said. He brushed a lock of hair back from Bucky’s forehead. “I remember thinking the same thing after Azzano. You were there, and suddenly I felt alive again.”

Bucky scoffed. “You got low standards for miracles.”

“I only accept the finest in divine works,” Steve countered. “You were here. Somehow. And it didn’t matter how things went with the Avengers, I just wanted you back.”

Bucky had cost him more than his friends; Steve was a war criminal. “Well, you found me. Whatever’s left.” Bucky nuzzled closer. Steve smelled warm and clean, soft cotton and a hint of vanilla and spice from his shampoo. Beneath lay a familiar layer of charcoal, faint as the memory of a too-thin guy bent over a sketchbook at a rickety table. 

“I’ll take whatever I can get, whatever you’re willing to share.” Steve paused again. Bucky glanced up. Steve’s gaze was fixed on the ceiling, his focus far away. “I thought that if I could do enough good in the world, it would erase my failures.”

“You didn’t fail.”

“I failed you,” Steve whispered. “Suddenly you were back on the board, and all the guilt I’d been carrying nearly killed me. I’d learned to manage it, poorly, by simply not giving a damn if I died. After all, what was there to live for? I was seventy years out of time and grief hit hard. I did the only thing I knew: I ignored it. But you? You’re doing all the right things, Buck, I promise.”

Bucky reached for Steve’s hand, lacing his metal fingers between Steve’s flesh and bone. The metal hand registered pressure, but the phantom sensation of Steve’s skin trailed along his nonexistent nerves. “Then why do I still wake up screaming?”

Steve went back to stroking Bucky’s hair with his other hand. “You have a lot of trauma to work through. Believe me, if I could make it all go away, I would. I hate that you’re in pain.” He pressed a kiss to Bucky’s cheeky.

“I hate all of this.”

“The only way out is through, sweetheart. You’re the strongest person I know, Buck. You’re my hero.”

Bucky scoffed. He’d used up his strength before he’d given in to Hydra, used up his willpower before surrendering to their control. That’s the problem: he was all used up. Some hero. 

He hid his face in the crook of Steve’s shoulders, spilling his secrets against Steve’s skin. “I’m a ghost, Stevie,” Bucky whispered. “I’m not real. I’m not the guy you fell for back in the 30s. I’m not the easy-going man from all those film reels. Hell, I’m not even the guy you pulled off Zola’s table. I’m not the coldblooded killing machine Hydra designed. I’m just . . . nothing. I don’t feel like I’m here. You’re in love with someone who died a century ago. You don’t want me. You want him.”

Steve stopped. “Don’t tell me what I do and do not want,” he answered, carefully measuring his tone. It wasn’t harsh, but certain. “I want you. All of you, even the parts you think no longer fit. I love the boy I grew up with, the sergeant who shipped out without me, and the man I found in the labor camp. I love the man who died for me, the one I couldn’t save, the one I never finished mourning. I love the prisoner of war who came back to me after seventy years of sleep and ice. I love whoever you are and whoever you’ll become. I love _you_. We’ve both changed, Buck. We’re not the same people, but we’re still the same souls.” He grew quiet, and Bucky focused on the sound of Steve breathing. He felt more than heard him say, “Mine has always been tangled up in yours.”

Bucky couldn’t examine the parts of himself he could remember without seeing Steve, too. The good memories were few and far between, but Steve was there in every one, bird-boned and fierce, or towering and strong. Steve had always been there; even Hydra’s attempts to obliterate him from Bucky’s memory had failed. Bucky wore Steve’s name on his bones, carved on his heart, written on his soul. Steve was his constant, the one thing he could be certain of even when he couldn’t trust himself. Especially then.

The words were easy, irrefutable. “I love you, too.”

Silence filtered back into the space around them. Steve’s breathing slowed, but Bucky doubted he slept. Bucky dozed, watching in stages as the gray light of dawn breached their curtains, caressing the sheets, brushing over them both. He’d tried to silence his thoughts, to keep the spiraling depression at bay.

Until he woke up and Steve was no longer beside him.

Steve had his own life, his own shit to deal with. He didn’t need Bucky dragging him further down. Maybe Steve needed therapy, too. Maybe he’d gotten wise to the burden of caring for Bucky’s broken mind and he’d bailed. Bucky would’t blame him.

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Bucky shook his head. “Stop it,” he muttered. “Steve wouldn’t do that. Goddamn lying brain.”

Steve confessed that doing good in the world made him feel better. One day, Bucky might be able to do the same. But who would want help from a serial killer? People in their right minds would avoid Bucky at all costs. He wasn’t a hero. He was a mess.

Bucky buried his face in the pillow. The fabric surrendered the scent of Steve’s shampoo, his skin. Well, if he was going to be the sole occupant of the bed, Bucky was going to take advantage. He curled into Steve’s side of the mattress, wrapping himself up in blankets until he was cocooned and warm. Steve had gone to fight the monsters on the street while Bucky fought the monsters in his skull. He could see him, that bright white star on his chest, making up for imaginary sins by protecting innocent lives. For a moment, he felt himself smile. That was the Steve he’d loved since they were kids. 

Maybe, if he asked nicely, and when he was better, Steve would let him borrow the suit. Maybe, if he was good enough, pretending to be a hero would make him one.

The room darkened again. With a shift in the mattress, Steve curled around him, letting Bucky hog all the bedding. Usually, Bucky panicked, the confinement too much, but this felt like comfort. Like kindness. 

This was a gift.

He hadn’t left enough space, so Steve took Bucky’s side of the bed. Bucky pressed his face against Steve’s chest. He tried to hope too hard that Steve was staying. “Shouldn’t you be out savin’ the world?”

Steve pulled him closer, tangling a hand in Bucky’s hair. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”


End file.
